Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Schillace: Google executives wanted to kill Google Docs despite millions of users

Sam Schillace · How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs) · Jan 11, 2024 · at 12:52

Sam Schillace, creator of Google Docs (originally Writely) and former Microsoft deputy CTO, recounts the internal pushback he received from Google executives during the product's early growth.

0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Like in the early days, like we had like, I don't know, a couple million users, five million users. And there were still executives at Google telling me that it was a stupid idea and that it should stop. And like, we shouldn't be doing it.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Sam Schillace

Opinion
Schillace: Crypto lacks meaningful user value even in the best case
“For crypto, I was always like, well, what if it works? Like, then I have to run OPSEC on my personal finances. That sounds dystopian. I don't want that. Like, I can't think of anything as a user that I think actually, like, is valuable here. Even in the best c…”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 22:36 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Opinion
Schillace: Most Good Product Ideas Originate from Engineering
“I think a lot of the good product ideas, most of the good product ideas actually come up from engineering.”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 48:36 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Schillace: In five years, software you cannot converse with will feel broken
“I think we're gonna feel the same way about intention and interactivity in our products very soon. Like, if I can't tell something what my intent is and have it configure itself in an intelligent way, have it converse with me, whether that's a device or a piec…”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 41:34 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Insight
Schillace: AI will make pixels free like the internet freed distribution
“I think the way that the internet made distribution of information free, I think AI is going to make pixels free.”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 1:04:42 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Opinion
Schillace: AI found more use cases in one week than crypto did
“Just to kick cryptos corpse one last time. Like there was some tweet, like at the beginning of the year that I saw that somebody was like, yeah, it took like the AI bros, like a week to come up with as many use cases as you know, crypto came up within that dec…”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 1:11:06 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schillace: Giving multi-agent AI systems shared whiteboard memory makes them smarter
“We were trying to get multiple versions of them working together, like multi-agents working together, and we gave them whiteboard Working memory, like as a shared working memory thing to fix this problem, and that turns out to make them much smarter.”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 21:18 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.